


The Rising of the Horns

by Gileonnen



Category: Iron - Woodkid (Music Video)
Genre: Apocalyptic Fairy Tales, Birds Ominous and Benign, Existential Yearnings, Gen, Keys and Locks, Transformation, War Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the only world they know, three warriors wait for the call to arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rising of the Horns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [krityan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krityan/gifts).



> Although I know that the weapon the tattooed man carries in the video is more properly termed a flail, there's something evocative about a _Kettenmorgenstern_ at the end of days. Many thanks to Shu for a very helpful beta; all remaining errors are my own, most probably kept against her explicit instructions. Thanks, as well, to LaReineNoire, for a final editing pass!

The houndmaster sits curled in on himself like an ammonite, the firelight gleaming in his eyes and striking gold on the sun-bleached ends of his hair. In one hand, his leashes hang slack; his dogs curl to either side of him with heads on forepaws and tails tucked in. "What happens to us when the boy wakes?" he asks.

The owl-tamer never looks up from the stick that she's peeling. The bark comes away in curls, revealing the white wood beneath. "You may as well ask what happens when the sun goes out, or when the wind dies--when the sun goes out, here we'll be. When the boy wakes, here we'll be."

"And when the wind dies?" On the far side of the fire, the man with the morningstar peers up at her through his pale lashes. All around them, the cicadas drone in the creaking pines.

The owl-tamer tosses the stick into the flames and heaves herself to her feet. Her eyes cast back the firelight like mirrors. "When the wind dies, there will be nothing left for me--but here I'll be."

In a flurry of tawny wings, she takes to the blackened skies, snatching silently at the air until she's only a pale shadow among greater shadows. In the morning, they know, she will return with a pouch of mouse bones at her hip and hollows under her unsleeping eyes.

* * *

On the night when the pines fall, the owl-tamer stands watch. The night is still. The cicadas have gone silent, and that warns her.

"Move," she tells the man with the morningstar, and he shakes awake the houndmaster, nested among his hounds. "Now--"

The great horned owl stoops to her fist and perches there. She presses nose to beak, then casts the owl off and watches her wing into the too-quiet wood. "Now," she says again. "Leave the cookpans, leave the firepit--"

They haven't yet broken camp when streamers of ash begin to fall.

The first cracks the tallest pine in two. The smell of new sap is overwhelming, nauseating as the smell of blood.

The next blasts the old treehouse. It collapses in a shower of rotten plywood.

The third strikes the houndmaster in the shoulder, and he howls his pain to the sky.

* * *

They dress the houndmaster's shoulder in a grey place, bare of grass and stone and tree. While the man with the morningstar washes clear the lingering ash, the owl-tamer keeps her eyes on the clouded sky.

"Rain soon," she says softly. "Use as much water as you need."

"We'll find a new place to shelter," the man with the morningstar says. His hands brush moth-light over the tender skin, and even so the houndmaster whines at the pressure. "We'll regroup. Start again."

A war horn blows twice, distantly. They wait in silence for it to wind a third time, but the third clarion call never comes.

"We can't do this alone," says the houndmaster through clenched teeth. "Alone, we'll only keep running from one shelter to the next. We'll never make it to the citadel. We'll never make it to the bier--"

"I thought you were afraid of what would happen when the boy woke," says the owl-tamer, but she threads her long fingers through his hair. His pupils are only pinpricks.

The houndmaster rolls his eyes up to the gathered clouds. "I'm more afraid of what will happen if he never wakes at all."

* * *

In the ruins of an old schoolhouse, they find bottles of ink, a tin stuffed with chalk, a box of matches not yet soaked to uselessness. It will be good to have matches again. They lost the last when the pines fell.

The houndmaster strikes a match and lights his lantern, although the dark's not yet deep enough that they need the light. "Don't waste them," hisses the owl-tamer, but it's only habit. They've quarreled over matches a hundred thousand times, and the quarrel is no different the hundred thousand first. The houndmaster turns up the wick and holds the lantern high.

"What's that?" asks the man with the morningstar. He puts down his weapon and stoops where the floorboards have rotted through. With his fingertip, he traces a faint, shining line from one side of the broken floorboard to the other.

He lifts a chain free, working it loose of the swollen wood. Under the houndmaster's lantern, the chain and the keys gleam like stars.

"Are you going to wear it?" the houndmaster asks.

The man with the morningstar grins and hands him the necklace. "You wear it. I'll wear it in my own way."

A thin film of ash coats the desks, obscuring the carvings that mark them. The owl-keeper brushes one clean with the heel of her hand. The ash clings to the crevices in the desktop, turning every carved line to black.

 _Y.L. WAS HERE,_ reads the weathered wood. Beneath it are two crude keys, black as a maker's brand.

* * *

With the ink and a needle made pure in the fire, the owl-tamer copies the keys. "This will hurt," she warns the man with the morningstar. He lies with his head pillowed on his arms, hounds snarling on his shoulder blades and pale skin sun-freckled. She can't remember the last time she saw the sun. "There's bone beneath it."

"You always tell me it'll hurt," he answers.

"It always hurts, doesn't it?"

He says nothing to that. He smiles even when she pierces the skin.

* * *

They meet the man with the book at a crossroads, seated on a leather box that could be suitcase or briefcase. His clothes are marbled like endpapers.

The owl-tamer knows to be wary of endings.

"Where are you going, stranger?" asks the man with the morningstar.

The man tucks his book into an inner pocket, rising and offering his hand as though to shake. He has a smile ready, an easy salesman manner that makes the hair stand up over the owl-tamer's ears--and then he catches sight of the houndmaster, and he drops that smile like a mask.

"Those are mine," he says. He hooks a fingertip under the keys around the houndmaster's neck and yanks him close.

"I found them," snarls the houndmaster, baring his teeth. He drops the leashes, but his dogs only whimper and fawn and show their throats.

"Well, I _lost_ them."

"Look at your dogs," says the owl-tamer, low. "They know him. _You_ know him."

"I don't know him," the houndmaster snaps.

"I don't know _you_ ," the man with the book replies, but he lets go of the keys and steps back to freeze like a mouse amid the sparse grasses. "I don't know any of you."

"Where are you going, stranger," repeats the man with the morningstar. It's no longer a question.

"The other way." He withdraws his book and holds it before him like a charm. On its cover, there are two crossed keys.

The man with the morningstar inhales. He, too, is frozen at the crossroads--but when he breathes out again, he gestures for his party to follow him west.

The man with the book takes the north road. The owl-tamer doesn't turn to watch him go, but she can feel his eyes on them all the way to the camp.

When night draws down, the owl-tamer sheds her human skin and wings northward. She passes over grey lands and grasslands, stones already cool, and there is no warmth to lift her wings. In a lone oak on a vast plain, she finds a parliament of still-drowsy owls. Huddling shoulder to shoulder among them, she asks after the man with the marbled jacket and the leather case.

They saw no one, no one, no one. Their soft hoots follow her as she departs.

She alights on a ram's skull overgrown with long grasses. A raven croaks _flesh, flesh_ , but she draws her wings up like a mantle. The raven takes off with a clatter of feathers.

 _Where is the man with the book?_ she asks the creature who sleeps beneath the grass. She doesn't expect an answer, and neither does she receive one.

* * *

They find the first dead soldier in a gully, his horned helm at his side and his face ash-dusted. Ravens have taken his eyes.

"Maybe the horn we heard was his," says the houndmaster.

The owl-tamer casts off her owl and kneels to study the corpse. In his veil of ash, he is the color of tarnished tin; he leaves a silhouette of clean earth when she shifts him to study his back. "The ash caught him as he fled," she says, and the houndmaster folds his hands together and bows his head.

When the silence has passed, he says, "We should crown him with flowers."

"There will be more after him. Should we crown them all?" asks the owl-tamer. She puts her gloved hand on his shoulder, and he reaches up to clasp it.

In the end, they crown no one. They send the dogs coursing along the gully with the houndmaster at their head, cold noses pressed to the ground in search of survivors.

Near evening, the houndmaster returns. He leads a horse by the reins, a horn-helmed horseman dozing in the saddle. "He needs us," the houndmaster says. His hair is in elflocks, his brow smeared with ash; he turns to the owl-tamer with a plea written on his face. "We can't do this alone."

She tilts her head while the owl rubs its beak against her leather glove, and with her ungloved hand, she stirs the pot. "Wake him. It's grouse," she says eventually, shifting over a little to make room for the horseman by the fire.

* * *

The four of them find the masked man hanging by his ankle from a long-dead tree. "We should cut him down," says the man with the morningstar.

"Someone put him there for a reason," the horseman replies.

Against the tree is leaning an immense sword, and beside it is a backpack crusted with ash. The owl-tamer stoops to undo the zipper. She holds her breath against the puff of dust that rises as the backpack slides open.

Within she finds a soft black cloth, silk-slick under her rough palms. She draws out the bundle, finds a corner, and shakes the cloth open.

At the center of the flag are two white keys crossed at the shanks.

"Cut him down," says the man with the morningstar, and this time, it's an order. "We have a banner, now. We need someone to follow it."

* * *

They march under the banner for three days before the owl-tamer realizes that she can no longer pick out the sun through the clouds.

She says nothing to the houndmaster or the man with the morningstar. If they've seen it, too, then it does no good to tell them. Even if they haven't, there's nothing to be done but advance.

* * *

The outbuildings are still shedding columns of smoke, but the fortress itself is rubble under the owl-tamer's boots when she catches sight of the man with the book. He comes galloping across the ashen meadow, jacket falling back around his arms and briefcase handle rattling.

The owl-tamer stands in what was once the gateway, gloved hand braced on her hip until he comes panting to a stop before her. His hair is tousled like thistledown, sweat-soaked locks clinging to his forehead. He keeps glancing at the flags, although they hang limp; he knows the shape of the device on them.

She raises both brows. "Breathe."

"Can't--smoke," he says. His voice is rough and brassy.

"It's war," she answers. "War means smoke."

He swallows. "Suppose it does." His eyes flicker to a place just right of her shoulder, and she knows that she no longer holds the gate alone.

"Have you come for your keys?" asks the houndmaster.

The man with the book shakes his head and reaches into his inner pocket, withdrawing the book with the gold-leaf keys on the cover. He places it in the owl-tamer's gloved hand. When she opens it to the endpapers, she finds a bookplate that reads in curling script, _Property of Y. Lemoine._

"I've come to help you open the locks," says the man with the book. The raw edge to his voice is almost gone.

"I know you," says the owl-tamer. She presses the book back into his hand and folds his fingers over it. "I knew you from the moment I saw you."

His smile is a shaft of sunlight. For a moment, she sees the boy he once was and might be again, and she fears him far more than she loves him. The houndmaster clutches at her hand until her brittle bones are about to snap.

The man with the book looks down at their joined hands as though he knows what he's asking. "I'm ready to wake up."

There is no wind. There has been no wind for days.

The owl-tamer steps forward. She raises her chin, her eyes like mirrors. "Then here I am."

**Author's Note:**

> "Y. Lemoine" is a reference to Woodkid's given name, "Yoann Lemoine."


End file.
